It's a feelgood comedy of incest, greed and corruption,' jokes producer Don Ranvaud. 'It's in the tradition of Renoir, of La règle du jeu a story where there are no really bad characters, just good ones.'
Tieta do Agreste (Tieta) is Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Diegues' vibrant version of Jorge Amada's classic story of a woman who was thrown out of her native village when she was 17 and pregnant. Twenty-six years later, Tieta returns as a rich widow and finds the village unchanged a state of affairs which will not endure for long after her arrival.
Ranvaud opened up China as an international co-production partner with Chen Kaige's Life on a String and Farewell to My Concubine, moved on to Brazil after the latter's worldwide success. 'It's a big mother of a country,' he says, 'and the cinema there had completely died.'
Diegues one of Brazil's leading directors, who has had films in competition in Cannes and won the FIPRESCI prize in San Sebastián last year for his low-budget Veja esa cançao (Look At This Song) was one of the first to respond, and together they began to assemble the team for the film as though it were a football team. Jorge Amado, the 83-year-old grand old man of Brazilian letters was the goalkeeper; top screenwriters João Ubaldo Ribeiro and Antonio Calmon (respectively the Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière of Brazil, claims Ranvaud) were the mid-field; Sonia Braga and Marilia Pera, the one internationally known, the other a leading actress within Brazil, plus world-famous musician Caetano Veloso, made up the forward line.
Sony (which has Brazilian and pay-TV rights) and UGC contributed towards the US$6 million budget (a fortune in Brazilian terms). It is, insists Ranvaud, the first time an American company and a European company have collaborated on a Brazilian film.
Prod co: Serene Sky Light, Sony, UGC
Prod: Don Ranvaud, Carlos Diegues, Bruno Stroppiano
Dir: Carlos Diegues
Guión (Scr): João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Antonio Calmon, Carlos Diegues, based on the novel by Jorge Amado
Foto (Ph): Edgar Moura
Mus: Caetano Veloso
Ints (Cast): Sonia Braga, Marilia Pera, Chico Anysio, Zeze Motta
Ventas (Sales): UGC
Duración (Running time): 90 mins
Programación (Screening): 9.00 & 21.00, 27 Sept, Victoria Eugenia; 16.00 & 20.30,
28 Sept, Astoria, 3
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